The "Augment Your Pre-order" campaign for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided markets itself "in the spirit of player choice" when, in reality, it is just a thinly veiled pyramid scheme. For those of you who haven't heard about it yet, here's the gist:

Pre-order bonuses are divided into 5 tiers.

Tier 1 = 3 different item packs

Tier 2 = Digital artbook or digital original soundtrack sampler

Tier 3 = Exclusive in-game mission

Tier 4 = Digital comic book or novella

Tier 5 = Game released 4 days early

The more pre-orders there are for the game, the more tiers are unlocked. Tier 1 is unlocked from the start. Every other tier gets unlocked in increments of 25% of some arbitrary, unknown pre-order goal.

Every pre-order is entitled to select one item from each unlocked tier.

So the marketing team has essentially presented a situation where people who are excited enough to pre-order Deus Ex (or who have already pre-ordered) are incentivized to get their friends to pre-order the game so they can get more bonuses and even possibly the game early. So let's look at this in pieces...